The Glow of Love
by SnazzinessRules
Summary: A very bonkers, very random HR fic...well, it's pea fic, so I think you know how bizarre that can get by now!
1. Chapter 1

**Hello everyone! The peas are back!  
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**This is the first new thing we've done in quite some time, but our old stuff is not forgotten either. We just wanted to write a Halloween treat, although it isn't specifically Halloweeny!  
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**We'll warn you now, this is typically pea!silly...as in bonkers, AU etc etc. We saw an article about...certain underwear...and all will become very clear as you read on (ch2 and 3 especially). All we'll say for now is that this underwear does exist and when we saw an article about it, naturally we did the pea thing and went "Ruth and Harry!" (and yes, we're aware we've written about poor Ruth's undies before...this fic is unrelated).  
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**Oh, and the time frame for this story is non-specific; anywhere after late S4 I suppose.**

**The title belongs to Mr Vandros and Change.**

**No copyright infringement intended; we don't own anything, we're just having fun!  
**

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On a typical sort of day, it mattered not one jot what underwear Ruth Evershed wore. You see, when you're single and approaching forty, it really doesn't matter whether your pants match your bra, whether that once-cute lace is greyed and a little frayed, or whether everything has gone just a little baggy…at least that's normally how she rationalised it to herself when, each morning, she threw on the first thing that came to had when she dressed at half past five.

This morning, she could tell that wash day was long overdue; all her comfy M&S briefs and bras were nowhere to be seen, except for a telltale strap peeping 'hello' out of her laundry hamper. Even some of the most frightfully old 'they'll-do if they have to' pieces of her underwear drawer also seemed to be missing, too. Resentfully, she tugged the drawer right out and resigned herself to her challenge; to pick out something wearable from the remaining selection. The trouble was, unlike her normal slap-dash, lucky dip approach, the remaining selection of smalls were not exactly to her requirements. The thong, for example, that she fished out first and threw back, was not going to see her comfortably through two commutes and a day racing around the Grid; in fact, in Ruth's opinion, thongs generally never saw anyone comfortably through any occasion and therefore this particular item had lived almost all of its life inside a drawer. Equally unappealing was the prospect of the choice of 3 pairs of French knickers; more attractive, yes, and certainly more comfortable than a thong, but not something she intended having to sit in all day when she was used to such sensible, practical pants. In fact, after all that, she decided that perhaps it was less of a challenge that she anticipated, as only one candidate was left – a small, but not ridiculously so, pair of white, lace pants she could vaguely once remember being presented with as a gift from a friend. Result 1; only a bra left to find.

She looked in the small drawer above the one she had just ransacked, and desperately begin flinging aside an assortment of vests and a stray bikini top. What remained, after the raid, was a dismal sight indeed; the inevitable 'double-boob- effect strapless bra, the bra which had an awkward habit of unhooking itself and the matching partner to the pants she held in her hand. Hmpf.

She placed the offending items on the bed; both were smaller and more fancy than anything she would ever put on for anything other than the most special of occasions, and she couldn't remember the last time that had happened! Perhaps the friend who had gifted her the underwear was right; her love life did need a kickstart. Nevertheless, short of a miracle awaiting her in her kitchen, such as Fidget having learned to do laundry, she was going to have to resort to wearing them. She glanced quickly at the alarm clock on her bedside table, emitted a high pitched shriek of panic, and grabbed the offending underwear of the bed and started putting them on.

She had just enough time to throw a blouse and skirt ensemble over the top before she was racing downstairs, trying to find her house keys, handbag and feed the cats all at the same time. Totally flustered and cursing fluently, she chucked on her coat and raced out of the door, no longer thinking about anything other than being late for her bus.

She was no less flustered by the time she arrived at the Grid, having missed one bus by minutes and the having to endure the ride from hell after being accosted by the obligatory bus-weirdo she always seemed to attract no matter where she went. With seconds to spare, she ploughed somewhat clumsily into the Forgery Suite and practically dumped herself into the seat.

"Sorry," she said, breathlessly, as she saw Harry's face come in to her view.

"Nice of you to join us, Ruth," he murmured, a teasing lilt to his voice as he spoke, and she could see him trying to suppress a smile as he watched her puff and pant in her seat. Their eyes met for a brief moment and, ridiculously, her heart began to beat even faster than it had been a second earlier. Someone, quite possibly Zaf, cleared their throat loudly and Ruth skittishly tore her eyes away from the warm brown ones she had been gazing into and busied herself with opening her notebook.

"Let's get it over with then, Malcolm," Harry growled at the mild mannered techie, "I'm waiting with baited breath to hear the findings of this report."

Zaf didn't bother hiding his snigger at the comment and a uncomfortable, yet slightly put-out, Malcom started his presentation. "As you know I've been asked to look back over the last three months and assess whether or not, as a section, we have been meeting certain Government targets and criteria..." he began, enthusiastically, and clicked on the overhead projector. "As you can see from the pie chart there are a number of areas in which we can improve..."

"Oh joy," she heard Harry mutter and had to bite down sharply on her bottom lip to keep from giggling. When she felt suitably in control, she snuck a glance at him and almost laughed out loud at the look of outright boredom on his face. It was clearly not a meeting he was intending to even pay attention to, let alone enjoy. She secretly liked the dull meetings, not for their subject matter, but for the time it gave her to sneakily study the man sat to her right. There was nothing dull about watching him as he dragged a large hand over his face in an effort to stay awake, or watching him fiddle with his tie or pen as his mind wandered. When his soft gaze met hers, she realised she had been caught out and, blushing lightly, she schooled her thoughts to somewhere more appropriate and tried to focus on what Malcolm was saying.

"Now, if we look at the number of incidents for August in contrast to those in Septemeber..." he was saying and she could see that everyone was beginning to glaze over with total disinterest until, all of a sudden, the lights flickered and then they were plunged into darkness.

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**Another chapter tomorrow if you're nice and leave us a review :P :)**

**xx**


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you to everyone that has reviewed, it's nice to know our particular brand of fic has been missed!**

**Just to reiterate that this underwear is availiable, we haven't made it up, google it and see!**

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A small "Yessssss!" emanated from directly across the table, and Ruth was about to ask whether someone had deliberately tripped the power in order to avoid the remainder of the presentation when she realised that, not only had it gone remarkably dark, but it had also gone remarkably silent.

"Um?" she managed to venture, before realising she didn't know what she was actually going to say. She didn't want to be the first to show her unease at the sudden turn of events.

"Right, assume code Alpha, high alert," came the gruff and authoritative voice from next to her, and Ruth tried desperately to remember what the sequence of procedures was for a code Alpha situation.

"I will in a minute, Harry," said Zaf, in a drawn out sort of a voice, "only I'm just trying to figure out why Ruth is luminous."

"Excuse me?" came two simultaneous voices.

Ruth looked down at herself as Harry shot a sideways glance. Sure enough, at a rather conspicuous location on her person, she was emitting a rather eerie green glow.

She made an involuntary squeak and choked on her own saliva.

"Your…underwear appears to be glowing, Ruth," Jo observed, somewhat unnecessarily now.

Aware of almost nothing but her own heavy breathing and hammering heart, Ruth just about noticed the emergency lighting kick in; not the ones from the back-up generator, but the low-level floor-lights reserved for full scale emergencies. It was barely enough light to see anything by, but enough to silhouette black outlines of faces against dark grey walls. And Harry appeared, as best she could tell, to be frozen still and looking in her direction.

"A-alpha," he fumbled, uncharacteristically. "Alpha, all stations please, we do not have time for this now Zafar, Ruth."

Ruth felt herself flush deeply at his words and at his implication that somehow she was enjoying creating a distraction.

A chair scraped, and as one side of her body fell cool, she knew Harry had vacated the room. Others followed, and slowly she shuffled after them.

--

"False alert, false drill," Harry barked, as the bulk of the team carefully rounded their way into a small space outside his office. "Imbecile downstairs got trigger happy whilst testing various switches."

"G-good," stammered Ruth, finding her voice for the first time since the Forgery Suite. She was just thankful that nobody could see her…or rather, that at least they couldn't see her beetroot face. Other parts of her were definitely still visible, despite her tightly folded arms. "So we can get the lights back on then."

"Not just yet. It would appear, from my conversation with a rather unhelpful woman named Sharon, that at least seven systems reports need to be processed before the computers will release the lockdown and allow a manual override."

A collective groan rose up from all apart from Zaf. "Great, then we can pass the time finding out why Ruth is luminous after all."

An almost exact repetition of her earlier squeak rose from her throat again and she turned, blindly, and bolted in the direction she was facing…straight into a desk, concealed in the darkness.

"P…please," she whimpered. Quite what she was pleading, she didn't know; that the situation would magically reverse itself? Indeed, that time might reverse itself? Or at the very least the people would stop asking questions and stop looking, as she assumed they were?

A petite hand smoothed over the small of Ruth's back. "He's just being immature," Jo observed. "Although it is intriguing," she added, rather unhelpfully.

"I…I don't know," she shrugged, pointlessly.

"You don't know?"

This time, the voice was Harry's, and she had to do her best this time to retain that horrible squeak inside.

"I don't. It was a present. I've never worn them before."

"A present." It was neither a question nor a repetition of the fact, merely just a dark mutter.

"Fro…m… from a friend, who, er…never mind."

"And you never knew they glowed?" There was the sound of flesh hitting flesh, and an ashamed groan, and the assembled group turned in its direction to just about make out Malcolm's silhouette, hand firmly clamped to mouth. Clearly, that question had escaped unchecked.

"I…I…no!"

"Well, _why_ do they glow?" asked a rather curious Jo.

"Well, I'd imagine in the right scenario, they'd be rather tantalising," replied Zaf and without warning, he, Jo and a previously diplomatic Adam seemed to launch full swing into a lingerie debate as if she was no longer even in the room.

"This can't be happening to me," she whispered, voice small, as she perched on the side of a desk and hunched over in an effort to cover herself up.

Taking pity on her Harry tried to steer the conversation in a different direction, "Perhaps the three of you could find something more constructive to discuss," he stated, authoritatively, "Like deciding who will fetch the torches and all the other things we have stored away to help in times like this."

"I don't know, Ruth's lighting the place up enough to keep us occupied at the minute," Zaf answered, cheekily, which earned him a sharp look from Harry and an embarrassed moan from Ruth.

"Zafar," Harry started, menacingly, as he moved to stand protectively in front of Ruth.

"Come on mate, you can help me get the stuff," interrupted Adam, keen to stop Harry from losing his temper.

Wisely, Zaf decided to quit whilst he was behind and cautiously followed Adam further into the darkness. Everyone was silent for a minute, listening to both men fumble their way across the office as they bickered with one another about the best route to take.

"Right, well we're all just going to have to wait it out," Harry stated, obviously, as he took his suit jacket off. "Everyone should find somewhere to sit and wait," he added, distractedly, as he turned round and gallantly draped his jacket around Ruth's shoulders.

"Thank you," she whispered, incredibly softly, touched at his thoughtfulness. She snaked her arms inside the warm jacket and wrapped it around her small frame feeling safe and warm as she became enveloped in his scent.

"Come on," he encouraged, gently, "let's get you out of the firing line." He gave her a warm smile as he reached out and touched her elbow. She gave a small nod of approval and let him guide her in the general direction of his office.

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**One more chapter to go, the sooner you review the sooner it gets posted! **


	3. Chapter 3

**Thank you for the lovely reviews...yup, definitely real! Google it!**

**Oh, and don't encourage the male version ;) we're already fighting the urge to write that!!  
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Softly, he closed the door, making sure it was shut to before relinquishing the tight reign he'd been holding on his laughter. A small Mutley-like snigger escaped and then, before he knew it, his jacket was at his feet and her hand was, unwittingly, on top of his as she reached for the door.

Her breath hitched at the fleeting contact, but her anger saw her through. "If you're going to laugh," she spat, "then at least have the guts to do it publically like everyone else. Don't pretend to be so noble."

"I'm not laughing _at_ you, Ruth. It's just a bit absurd, that's all. You have to admit, it couldn't happen to anyone else."

"Because I'm such an idiot?"

It was clearly a rhetorical question, and yet he couldn't let it go unanswered. Her hand still rested on his, almost forgotten, but as he removed his own fingers from the metal door panel she tugged her own away as if burned.

"No," he began, softly. "You're just a magnet for trouble."

She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply through her nose. How was it that it didn't really matter what he said at all? Whatever words he chose always seemed to make it better. She gave a small, snort and shook her head at herself, "You're probably right."

"I generally am, Ruth," he responded and she could hear the amusement in his voice even if she couldn't quite make out his smile in the darkness. She watched him as he stooped to the floor and collected his jacket. Her breath caught in her throat as she felt his fingers fumble against hers seconds before the soft material of the jacket was pressed into her hand. "Will you stay?"

She swallowed nervously and hugged the jacket to her chest as she whispered she would. Harry gallantly turned and walked towards the couch allowing her the space and time to slip his jacket back on properly. She'd almost made her way over to the couch when stray beams of light startled her as they were being moved around the Grid.

"Looks like they found the torches," Harry said, shaking his head as he watched Jo smack Zaf in the arm for shining the torch in her eyes. "I'm never going to live it down am I?" she groaned upon seeing Zaf stick his torch down his shirt in an imitation of her glowing underwear.

Ruth shuffled onto the sofa and they both watched for a few minutes longer as their younger colleagues moved on to entertaining themselves by pulling scary faces in the beams of light.

"At least I'm no longer needed as a source of amusement," she said, happily, and turned her gaze to Harry.

"Or as a light source," he teased and was glad to see her smile at him.

"Very funny," she muttered as she stuck her tongue out at him, playfully, "I thought you brought me in here to put a stop to the teasing?"

"I did," he whispered as he leant in closer to her, "but you're just so delightful to tease, Ruth."

Her heart seemed to stop for a second and then smash frantically against her chest as his words sank in. He was so close to her she could feel his warm breath washing against her ear and she had to bite her lip to stop from sighing in disappointment as he moved away from her.

"I…am?"

"Yes." This time his voice seemed to come from other side of her. The fluttering of her eyelids and the darkness of the room had caused her to miss his movement, but the clink of glass let her pinpoint him at his cabinet. "Drink?"

"At this hour? Whilst on duty?"

He could picture the raised eyebrow she would be giving him, and smiled a little to himself.

"You can't see what I'm pouring."

"No, but I know you."

"I'm insulted," he sulked, and she could tell he was pulling a feigned, petulant pout. "It happens to be mineral water…this time. I'm not that much trouble."

"Well," she said, quite unaware of where her sentence was leading her until it was too late, "I do attract trouble."

Suddenly, the realisation of her sentence hit her, and an endless sort of silence seemed to stretch on until she broke it with an audible gulp.

"Quite," he whispered.

"Mmm."

"The question is, do you like trouble?"

"I … um … I mean, well, it's dangerous, isn't it, trouble?" She was rambling, now, and well aware of it. It was too late to backtrack, and in a way she didn't even want to, but she couldn't quite process what was happening fast enough to cope with it. In a desperate madness, she stood, pivoted on the spot and ran her hands through her hair.

"Yes, Ruth," he chuckled. "The intrinsic nature of trouble tends to imply a sense of danger…but it can be thrilling if you're open enough to try it."

She inhaled sharply, aware that he was gradually walking towards her. In the darkness, every sense was heightened, and she could hear the soft footfall and practically feel the air move as he did.

"T..tr…try…" She was no longer sure whether the conversation was purely about danger any more or a mixture of things. Perhaps, even, something else entirely.

"Yes, try."

_Oh God!_ He was right in front of her, the smell of his cologne, the feel of his breath, his chest resting against the lapels of his own, chivalrously donated, jacket.

"I'm, um," …_inarticulate, incomprehensible, scared witless…_ "I'm not…"

"What?" The pout of his lips around the _w_ pressed his mouth into fleeting contact with hers. "Brave enough?"

She nodded, her nose rubbing against his.

"I beg to differ," he purred. "You're wearing glowing underwear; I'd say that was definitely a brave choice."

She laughed, softly, and he caught her parted mouth between his own. Caught off guard for a split second, he felt her body tense and he lightened his kiss, teasing his bottom lip against hers until she reciprocated. He kissed her softly and slowly, savouring the taste and feel of her lips against his. She sighed, contentedly, against his mouth and the small, involuntary sound was his undoing. He swept his tongue inside her parted lips and reached up to cup her face as he kissed her with a passion that was all consuming. Her hands made their way to his chest, her nimble fingers exploring the soft material of his shirt and the warm skin hidden underneath as his mouth on hers removed any thought that wasn't about touching him, wanting him, _loving_ him.

"Mmm…Ha…mmm," she tried, and failed, to catch his attention in snatched breath between kisses. "Harry."

"Mm?"

"Stop."

He did, abruptly, and she wondered if her words had sounded different to her intent. Gently, she leaned forward and brushed her lips once more over his.

"Sorry," she whispered, "it's just…" She finished her sentence with a brief look towards to flashlights outside.

"They can't see in."

"I know, but…"

"…it's too close for comfort. I know." He took her hand and led her to sit beside him in comfortable silence on the sofa.

"I didn't want to stop," she ventured, after the longest time.

"I didn't want you to."

"Then maybe we c-could..." she trailed off, embarrassed, and he gave her hand a small squeeze of encouragement. "Later, I mean, not here, we could, um..."

"Pick up where we left off?" he asked, directly in to her ear, and smiled when he felt her shudder.

"Yes," she whispered, breathlessly, relaxing slightly when he raised their joint hands to his mouth and placed a soft kiss on her knuckles.

"That depends," he murmured, his warm eyes meeting her startled ones across the darkness.

"O-on?"

"On who bought you your underwear," he clarified. His voice was still soft and his fingers still caressed hers but she could hear the slight undertone of insecurity that laced his words.

"A very annoying yet well meaning friend presented me with it ages ago, Harry." She turned slightly and trailed the fingers of her free hand down his cheek, "It's not from a boyfriend, if that's what you've been imagining?" She briefly brushed her lips against his as he gave an embarrassed nod and happily allowed him to deepen the kiss for a moment or two.

"And you had no idea it glowed in the dark?" he asked, playfully, as he pulled back from the kiss.

"It said "Light Up Your Love Life" on the label – I thought my friend was just making a general hint…not a very, very specific one!"

"Well, you must remember to thank your friend someday," he replied, very seriously.

"Oh?" She feigned innocence.

"Oh yes, I think her buying you that bra might be about to pay off big time."

"Mmm," she mumbled, rising from her seat to leave; if they were to stand any chance of maintaining self control all day then she should probably leave now. "Perhaps the embarrassment was worth it then." She gently nibbled on his bottom lip and then slowly pulled away leaving him rooted in his seat.

"I'll make sure it was," he promised, as he heard her begin to slide the door open.

She smiled, cheekily to herself; "and Harry?"

"Yes?"

She made sure the door was all but closed behind her again, and whispered her parting shot from the safety of outside. "It's not just the bra that glows."

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**Thank you for reading :) We hope you enjoyed!**

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